Reviews of The Philosopher's Autobiography: A Qualitative Study

Reviewed by Susan Tridgell: The Philosopher's Autobiography: A Qualitative Study

[A] solid and scholarly book, sure to arouse both interest and
argument. Interest, because despite the many books and articles that
have been devoted to the autobiographies of Augustine, Rousseau, and
Sartre, they are not generally considered as examples of a sub-genre in
autobiography. . . . Schuster's consideration of these works (and
others) as a sub-genre, as specifically philosophical autobiography,
brings a fresh perspective to bear on them.

One cannot it seems, have the strengths of Schuster's book without its
controversial aspects. The reactions of readers are likely to be
variable; from gratitude to a work that exposes the condescending
stance taken by some critics and biographers towards their subjects to
doubt as whether the stories philosophers tell should be so strongly
endorsed. Whatever the outcome, the field of philosophical
autobiography has undoubtedly found an authoritative cartographer as
well as a staunch champion.

Biography - Volume 27, Number 3, Summer 2004, pp. 602-605.

Review by Morehouse, Richard E.: "The Philosopher's Autobiography: A Qualitative Study." MUSE members can access the article at Biography

Shlomit Schuster brings an overwhelming breadth and depth of
scholarship in philosophy, philosophical counselling, biographical
studies, and qualitative research to her comprehensive and provocative
work, The Philosopher's Autobiography: A Qualitative Study.

Her scholarship does not make the book hard to read or inaccessible to
the average reader with some background in philosophy, but it does
challenge the reviewer to present an overview of the arguments of the
book in a way that provides potential readers with a sense of what they
will encounter. To address that concern, I will provide a brief
overview of the book, but focus on the chapter entitled "Philosophical
Psychoanalysis and Qualitative Research."

The Philosopher's Autobiography: A Qualitative Study begins with a
chapter entitled "Philosophical Autobiography." Schuster defines
philosophical autobiography as a narrative self-questioning of the
self. This self-questioning explicates the social context of the
autobiographer. Schuster understands philosophical biography to be a
critical inquiry into the self and its times. This philosophical
self-narrative is a creative way to understand the human inner world....

"It is likely to prove infinitely rewarding for anyone
who is interested in learning more about the relationship between
autobiography and philosophy -- with all this entails for our understanding
as existential psychotherapists of self-constructs"

Shlomit C. Schuster is a well-known practitioner of philosophical
counseling, based in Jerusalem. Her earlier book, Philosophy Practice: An
Alternative to Counseling and Psychotherapy (Westport, CT: Praeger
Publishers, 1999), contributed significantly to the solidification of the
emergent field of philosophical counseling (also called philosophical
practice). The present book is still another contribution to the field, but
with a difference.

Though a philosopher's autobiography need not necessarily be a
philosophical autobiography, in many an instance it is one. The
philosophical autobiography is in fact a philosophical writing of distinct
type. Schuster's work is not only a learned study of this genre but also the
first book solely dedicated to the subject of philosophical autobiography.

If all philosophy is self-reflection, then it is all the more true of the
philosophical autobiography. An autobiographical writing of a philosopher is
a window to his or her world of philosophy and the modes of philosophizing.
A philosophical autobiography is for the philosopher what Schuster calls a
"philosophical psychoanalysis."

The first three chapters of the book clarify the notions of philosophical
autobiography and philosophical psychoanalysis. Philosophical psychoanalysis
is a philosopher's attempt to understand oneself and others from a
philosophical perspective. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 are an in-depth study of
Augustine's Confessions, Rousseau's The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Sartre's Words. The author has chosen Augustine, Rousseau and Sartre as
case studies in philosophical psychoanalysis, because their life-narratives
are rich in philosophical self-understanding. They made use of philosophical
self-analysis to make their lives worth-while and to become persons they
wanted to be, contends the author. She has successfully brought out the
philosophical dynamics of these philosophers' living, thinking and writing
and shows how they accomplished a successful philosophical psychoanalysis.
Chapter 7 is an epilogue that further substantiates the author's project,
drawing on the autobiographies of J.S. Mill, S. Kierkegaard and B. Russell.
Schuster's book is marked by originality, scholarship, clarity of thought
and an engaging style. The book invites its readers to a
philosophical-autobiographical reading of their lives and become more
self-aware in the path of making their lives worth-living. As Maurice
Friedman rightly notes in the foreword, this exciting book "deserves and
hopefully will find a wide readership."

Online review by Paola Teresa Grassi of The Philosopher's Autobiography

The author proposes some ideas for an alternative form of
psychoanalysis that she calls 'philosophical psychoanalysis'. The
purpose of the new approach she advocates is not therapeutic, but
rather a 'suggestion for how to understand persons as subjects'. The
premise of the investigation is radically anti-freudian and practically
rooted.

Schuster asserts: "Among the people I spoke within my private
philosophy practice are those who have received psychoanalytically
oriented psychotherapy and have felt that the Freudian method did not
address their specific problems or what they considered the background
of their problems. People often feel the need to relate their present
problems to their past, but not necessarily through a Freudian or other
clinical developmental theory.If one looks for nonclinical development
understandings of the self one can find numerous philosophers who aimed
at analyzing and describing the development of the self, the soul, the
emotions, or memory".

Paradigmatic in this sense are the three autobiographies that Schuster
outlines in detail in the following three chapters: Augustine's,
Rousseau's and Sartre's.
Focusing on the dialectical distinction between the 'slavish mental
activity' and the 'free mental activity', appropriated from Dewey, the
author argues that philosophers such as the three mentioned above
"described their awareness of slavish aspect of mental activity, but
also described an autonomous philosophizing and how free philosophical
activity changed their very being and life". Schuster's proposition of
'philosophical psychoanalysis' aims also to present itself as a
'qualitative approach' like the qualititative research originated in
phenomenology.